The ever increasing popularity of messaging and mobile data formats such as SMS, MMS, VOIP, email, instant messaging, video messaging, live video streaming etc place an ever increasing strain on network capacity. The increased traffic affects network efficiency. To improve data throughput many providers employ shaping wherein the data rate provided to various users who exceed set data usage limits is restricted.
The effects of increased data traffic are far more evident in many of the current mobile communications platforms. In essence as mobile technologies have advanced from first generation mobile device, to second and 2.5 generation and more recently third generation, data traffic has grown exponentially. This has been mainly due to the provision of additional bandwidth. However, the efficiency of data transfer over mobile networks is rate limited by the hardware components of the network. Not only does the hardware limit the data rate it also limits the amount of users any one node with the network can service at any particular time.
Given the ever increasing amount of data being placed on mobile communications networks there is clearly a need for a messaging system and method that is not only capable of handling present network data traffic but is also readily scalable to cater to increases in data.